IELTS Reading Tips

General training and academic training

Using the tips below would help you earn yourself an overall of 9 bands making it easier for you to get into university and to migrate to different countries

Read and solve papers every day :

It is very important for you to read. Articles, newspapers, books, stories are great places to start. Try to understand the paragraph. Read curiously and read for fun just like reading a fictional story. This will help you to get used to reading, your vocabulary and your reading speed will increase as well. To acing the IELTS. Read. Every. Day. It could just be for 30 minutes, but make sure you read.

Go through the questions first:

Reading the question first will make it easier for your brain to process the answer. You have an hour in total to answer 40 questions. It will tell you what to look for when you get to the passage and save a lot of time.

Reread the questions and understand them :

Even, a small error in understanding what the question wants can pull you back a long way. Read the questions properly and only use one minute for each question. Recheck the questions with the 20 spare minutes and transfer your answers along the way.

Scan and skim :

Skim the passage given to you and look for the main ideas, and understand the main content. Look for keywords but do not use them, just read around them. Scan through the whole paragraph it will save time .

Mark along the way :

The best trick is to search and skim. Questions will be related to looking for specific information and filling in/choosing the right answers. While skimming, make sure you highlight keywords like the ones related to the questions.

General knowledge does not matter :

Your own knowledge will not affect your grades. Read the question and try to understand what it is about. It is fixed on the writer's point of view or the contents of the passage. This will help with question types such as true/false/not given or yes/no/not give . if you can not find the answer just take a guess

Practice different question types, learn to skim, scan and pick information. Read the questions carefully.

You have 40 questions and have to solve them within 60 minutes, so you cannot spend more than 1 minute on each question in the first two sections. The rest will be used for reading the sentences and making sure that they match

The last 5 minutes will be used to confirm your answers.

Do not waste time on a hard question. Solve the easy ones first and come back to the difficult ones later. Remember, you have 40 questions to be solved not just one hard question.

Practice is compulsory, so solve a minimum of one paper a day. This will help train you beyond the IELTS level of difficulty, which will ensure that you can get the required band score in the actual exam.